July 27, 2006

With the right presentation, as Mark Twain taught us, we can sometimes entice an entire line of volunteers to whitewash a fence. Happily, on this sticky summer day, we didn’t have to work very hard to get haiku poet and teacher Tom Painting to cover this blank space with his poetry. Indeed, add the adrenalin rush of competition — here, the monthly “kukai” (peered review poetry contest) from the Shiki Monthly Kukai folk at Haiku World — and Tom Painting becomes even more prolific and eloquent.

So, please sit back in the shade and enjoy Tom’s contributions to the Shiki Monthly Kukai from April through July of 2006. [At the foot of this post, you’ll find the kukai topics related to each haiku. You can see the work of other contestants in the Shiki Kukai Archives.]

July 21, 2006

We’re still eschewing punditry and mostly skirting the blogosphere, but we couldn’t help notice that Denise Howell of Bag & Baggage fame — one of the most liked, respected and admired lawyer-webloggers (and high-tech mommies) — was recently removed from her part-time post at the giant law firm Reed Smith. [See the reactions, e.g., of Bob and Carolyn, Evan, Dennis, and Ernie].

On July 15, 2006, Denise announced her work status, while proclaiming that being Tyler‘s mom was her “most important job,” and that her “professional roadmap henceforth will involve only things that are washed through a stringent ‘how much do I really love that?’ filter, and can be comfortably accomplished in the limited, catch-as-catch-can hunks of time that fall serendipitously out of the sky during the course of my other ‘duties’.”

. . . Tyler is job #1 . . .

The f/k/a Gang wishes Denise all the best in her personal, parental, and professional (ad)ventures. Instead of opining further, we’re going to post poems from Kobayashi Issa, one of Japan’s four Master Haiku Poets. Although he died almost two hundred years ago, we see some familiar themes in Issa’s haiku: what is work? do we all have choices? does gender matter? who’s the boss? what are our priorities?

July 14, 2006

July is proving just how hot and humid it can be, throughout much of the eastern and midwestern United States. With the help of f/k/a‘s Honored Guest Poets, haikuEsq offers summer distractions that we hope will bring more than momentary relief.

July 7, 2006

Summertime often means revisiting special places that offer a familiarity which is both comfortable enough for reminiscing and secure enough to permit new adventures and perspectives. For haiku lovers, a visit to the Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Awards, at Modern Haiku Journal, has become a rewarding new summer ritual — where we can find poems that ememplify both “the time-tested canons and aesthetics of haiku” and the creative vitality of the finest contemporary haiku poets.

In their Summer 2006 issue (Vol. 37.2), the editors of Modern Haiku announced the winners of the fourth annual competition, which commemorates the life and work of their former editor Robert Spiess. Once again, the three prize-winning poems and the five honorable-mentions are fine examples of the art and craft of “modern” haiku poetry. The f/k/a Gang encourages you to start or renew your own tradition of spending a summer break with the Spiess Awards, no reservations needed.

Because Spiess Award winners again include a number of our Honored Guest Poets, we are pleased to share their winning selections with our readers.

Although you’ll need a subscription to fully enjoy the poems and essays found in Modern Haiku, an online sample is available for each issue at their website. You can find representative haiku and senryu from the Summer 2006 issue of Modern Haikuhere. They include more poems from our f/k/a Honorable Guest Poets:

last of the daffodils
brrng brrng brrng of a bicycle
approaching from behind

One tradition that has just ended at Modern Haiku is the editorship of Lee Gurga. The new editor, Charles Trumbull, discusses Lee’s stewardship and his own acceptance of the honor and responsibility, in this Letter . Lee Gurga knows a thing or two about summer and traditions:

July 1, 2006

Dustin Neal should have passed out a lot of cigars today [bubble gum, I hope] — Issue #1 of his brand new, online haiku journal, clouds peak, went public early on July 1, 2006. Although Dustin says future quarterly editions will be pared back to 25 to 50 traditional English-language haiku, Issue #1 has a couple hundred haiku by almost 70 haijin.

. . . From 2003 to 2009, f/k/a ["formerly known as"] was the home of "breathless punditry" and "one-breath poetry." It is all here in our Archives. You'll find commentary on lawyers and legal ethics, politics, culture, & more, plus "real" haiku by over two dozen Honored Guest Poets.